Las Vegas, The Boulevard at Night

The painting that I've been working on, The Boulevard at Night, is my first expression of my experience of Las Vegas. The ideas have been stirring in my head for some time, and finally I've started painting. I'm expressing the color, the night life, the mood of the city, the essence of the beauty. The reflections especially call out for oil paint, and watercolors, to be expressed graphically. There is very wide scope for the imagination.



My goal is to take these realities into the abstract form, carrying the audience with me into a new way of seeing the things around them. In visiting art galleries around Las Vegas, I have seen a lot of art (and some exceptional sculpture) and I'm looking forward to contributing my own abstract voice to the artistic expression of the city. All abstract art comes from the realistic world, and the degree of abstraction and the strength of expression comes from what is inside.

At the same time, we don't want to abstract so far that we lose touch with the real, because that is the only connection we have with the audience. The artist is responsible to carry the people along with him as he creates his experimental art, so they can see where he's going.  It's like you're bringing them aboard your boat and sailing with them to your world.  People need to be able to see themselves in your work. Realistic painting may represent one person's perspective, but abstract art has the capacity to communicate universally.

I'm going to be working with some galleries in California and Las Vegas throughout this year. I'm developing a project about the Boulevard into a large exhibit for later this year.  Keep watching the blog for more updates on this project.

Abstraction in Practice, article

In the Spring 2011 issue of Art of the Hills, John A. Day wrote a very insightful article entitled, Abstraction in Practice.


In this article, he offers the reader a brief discussion of the nature of abstract art, recognizing that, “abstract art exists on a continuum running from realistic through non-representational measured by degrees, and it is those degrees that merit discussion in issues of style, technique, and intent.”

He then follows the thread of those degrees through the art of various South Dakota artists. The section about my art featured The Cello Dream.  Click on the image below to read the article.